Do you need a ladies saddle if you are going to ride a lobby horse?


On Saturday I got up bright and early to attend the NC Women?s United, County Women?s Agenda Assembly . Try saying that fast at 8:30am on a Saturday.

I got lost again. But this time the directions while wildly wrong I at least knew the area well enough to point myself in the right direction. The online site I used, I?m not going to be using again, I?m looking at you Rand McNally! How could you! The directions did not seem to take into account that many downtowns have one way streets and that no matter what time you are on them, you can?t just make a one way street go both ways. You also are not going to turn right onto a street that does not intersect the street you are on right now. If its three blocks away and going the wrong direction, you aren?t going to get anywhere by turning the wrong way on it. The directions they gave me had nine separate things for me to do. None of which would have gotten me to my destination. Losers.

Anyway. The reason for the NC Women?s United, My County Women?s Agenda Assembly was to show us this agenda and get our input as well as seeing if there was anything else we felt needed to be included. They broke us up into discussion groups and] asked us what items on the agenda were of the most import to us individually. The issue categories were as follows

Access to Health Care
Civic Participation
Economic Self Sufficiency
Violence Against Women

We all agreed that Economic Self Sufficiency was the most important category to us. We also felt that education was vital to self sufficiency and ultimately, all the other categories. The more you learn the more you can earn. We talked about it and said that there should be more job training for women for fields outside the traditional fields of study open to us. The example used was that more women should be trained to be welders and electricians and fewer as CNAs or daycare workers. True, those jobs are important, but other non traditional jobs have a higher wage and can offer a better life. Not every woman might want to be an electrician or a welder or a construction worker, but that those opportunities must be made available to them.

I totally agree. Why should so many young women just be funneled into CNA training or plugged into day care work? These are very low paying and mostly offer no room for advancement. I saw a feature on this on 60 Minutes years ago and the idea of training women for jobs in male dominated fields was working brilliantly. You don?t have to be a man to put up wallboard or be an electrician or a roofer. I think this should be the next thing we as women strive for - to get more of us out of scrubs and into hard hats.



We also learned the best ways to lobby your reps. You need to:

Decide how - email, snail mail, telephone, or schedule a meeting

When talking or writing to your representative you should be identify yourself and what ever group or groups you are a member of, and let them know you are also a constituent this gives what you are saying more weight with your rep. You should be organized and informed but don?t be afraid to admit you don?t know an answer. Keep in mind that nothing is black or white there is a lot of gray in any issue. Be polite and dress appropriately.

Keep your message wither, writing, emailing, or visiting in person , to one page, use color if possible and include charts or grafts if you can. Make your message stand out from the rest of the paper on their desks. But most importantly, Keep it simple.

You should keep in contact with your rep. Let him or her know when they have done something you approve of as well as when they do something you do not! These people work for you, you hired them and you can ?fire? them. Now, go out there and annoy your elected officials. They wanted the job in the first place, show them what they got themselves into.

Also, today is November 22, anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, this is another example of how under the Bush administration our society going to hell.